


Maybe Get Some Armour and a Mask

by preraphhobbit



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Big angst, Gen, Multi, Neither do I, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, ben solo is a scrawny kid who gets bullied, han solo attempts to be fatherly, i have a lot of feelings just go with it, i have no idea where im going with this but just go with it, kylo ren doesn't know what do with his feelings, leia organa as a mother scenes, maybe smut in the future?? who knows, parts of this will take place during and post The Last Jedi so spoiler warning, sort of based on how i imagine growing up with han solo and leia organa as ur parents would be like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-16 20:18:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13061406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preraphhobbit/pseuds/preraphhobbit
Summary: “You’re strong the Force, Ben. Stronger than I am. Maybe as strong as your grandfather. That doesn’t mean you can be weak in everything else.”(title taken from "the man with no skin" by great lake swimmers)





	1. Han

**Author's Note:**

> mostly about how ben solo became kylo ren. no reylo in first chapter but stay tuned.

His father always made a very particular face when he was displeased. His mouth would draw up tight like the neck of a bag and one eyebrow would raise as his head lowered- judgmentally, he later thought, as though he guessed he could do whatever you were doing better himself, if only you weren’t involved. Maybe legends make bad fathers, or maybe he only felt that way because he was young.

At the end of it all, he’d expected to see that face of disapproval and counted on his hatred of it spurring him forward. That face- that hated face- would be the last he saw of Han Solo before he cut him out of his heart and out of the galaxy like pulling overripe fruit off a branch.

In his mother’s garden there had been fruit trees and sweet springs. The blossoms changed colour according to the time of day, deepening to blood red by sunset and turning midnight blue when it was dark. He hasn’t thought of the blossoms- their thick, intoxicating smell- in years, but he can smell them suddenly. See his father’s disapproving face when he cracks make-believe lightsaber sticks against tree trunks and through shrubbery, or else sparring with some of the neighbour children. 

It was different for him, though. More real, because he ate breakfast with heroes other people pretended to be. And felt the weight of his uncle’s cybernetic hand on his back during an embrace of greeting, the shiver that run up his spine when he thought that his own grandfather had sliced that hand from its socket. He hated how stories got twisted when passed from mouth to mouth, how legends he knew to be true were contorted slowly into something that never happened.

“Luke never fought Vader on Hoth. They didn’t meet until they were in Bespin.”

“How would you know?” sneered Zuuc, a Bothan with a bad temper.

“I’m Han Solo’s son. Leia Organa is my mother!”

They never believed him because his parents were never home, and when they were home they kept to themselves and the high walled garden.

“You?” Their laughter flared brightly in the cracks between his lineage. His hands fisted inside his sleeve, the bitten nails biting into the tender flesh of his boyish palms.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“What if I am?”

They grappled viciously in the neighbourhood courtyard, the Bothan’s hairy knuckles grinding into his teeth and browbones until he lost count of the strikes- but didn’t put his arms up to protect his face, took every hit straight to the bone until his shriek of anger sent Zuuc six feet into the air and backwards.

Then his father appeared, with his particular face of displeasure. Hauling him upright by the collar.

“Get in the house, Ben.”

“That’s-”

He thrust Ben onto the step and turned around to face the staring crowd. “Go home.”

“You’re Han Solo!”

“He wasn’t lying…”

“Han Solo wants all of you to go home now. Ben, go inside.”

“Dad-”

“Ben.” 

He wasn’t supposed to use the Force unless he was being supervised, but he slammed the door behind him anyway, hands still knotted at his sides, and when he uncurled his bruised fingers a constellation of red half-moons had appeared in his skin. And still he was looking at the moons he had forged on himself when he heard Han Solo come into the house and shut the door behind him with a grunt.

“Ben.”

Says nothing. Curls his hand shut again and stands heaving.

“What have we told you about doing...that?”

“What’s the point of being able to feel it if I never use it for anything?”

“Ben.” Can hear the exasperation in Han’s voice. “We’re not having this argument again.”

“Then don’t argue.”

“What would Leia say if she found out you were throwing kids across the yard-”

“What’s the point of feeling it if I never-”

“That’s not how the Force works!” snaps his father.

He turns and glares into Han’s face. 

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

“You’re damn right I don’t.” He strides past him towards the living quarters, stopping short to brace his hand on the doorway. “And I’m glad. But you can’t let your anger keep getting the better of you. Your mother-”

“What about her?” She’s not here.”

“Your mother is taking care of the galaxy, Ben.”

And nobody is taking care of me, he thinks. Selfishly, yes. Pathetically. And Han Solo cannot make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs when he has a son to take care of, a son with a bad temper. A son who throws Bothans into walls with a purposeful crook of his finger, who can slam doors with an energy only he can feel. Who trembles with rage even now, in the thin silence of his own house.

“Can’t we just forget about it?”

“No, we can’t. You might have hurt someone to-”

“They were hurting me!” Hates the hot burst of tears that brim and fall. “They always make fun of me. Nobody believes you’re my father, and nobody cares either. They think the Force is just made up and the Jedi are a bunch of old stories. They think I’m weird and stupid and I wish I wasn’t like Mom or Uncle-”

“Ben.” 

The other face of Han Solo. The father face. The fatherless father pretending to be a friend. Or that’s what he tells himself. All smugglers are actors to some extent, but perhaps it is impossible to feign such gentleness in the eyes. The eyes of Han Solo are locked windows to which his son holds the key. 

“No matter what, I am proud of you.” Resting his heavy hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You’re my son. My boy. No matter what you do, you’ll always be that. You have a gift, Ben, that nobody else has. And its hard for them to understand. Hell, even I don’t understand it sometimes. But you come from a family of great people.”

He swallows. “Just Mom and Uncle Luke. Darth Vader wasn’t great.”

“Vader…” He looks pained. Doesn’t seem to know what to say. “Anakin was a great man. Or he would have been. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your mother.”

“Ben.”

The other face of Han Solo.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

“Take off the mask. You don’t need it.”

The mask is heavy on his face. A comfort as steadying and comfortable as he imagines a grandfather’s hand. A grandfather who would have taught him to be great. 

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?”

Han Solo is desperate. He can gloat in that. 

“The face of my son,” says the smuggler.

The light here is strange. Deep red like the flowers of some garden. So he cannot really see Han Solo’s face except that his hair is grayer than it used to be and his skin softened to the fleshiness of time. It is not the face of his father. Has no father. Has no mother. Has only the faces they wore. 

“Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him.”

Better to wear a mask than a false face, he thinks. Give nothing away. Gain nothing at all. In the dark, there are honest places to hide.


	2. Leia

There are times he can feel the woman he used to call his mother as keenly as though she were in the room with him. Hers had been a formidable presence. Her face never betrayed a thing that pained her- not pain or sorrow. She saved herself for what was important: anger and joy. Felt each one as keenly as a blaster shot, and made everyone else feel them too. And in the end betrayed nothing of the pain she carried, which was formidable. He thinks about this sometimes.

Once he saw her memories cut into his mind, the ring of golden fire that was once Alderaan showering his mind’s eye with sparks; and, as though it were his own, his mother’s face shining back at him in cosmic monochrome, a prisoner’s reflection in the Death Star’s bridge window. In his chest he felt the staggered beat of her heart, the force of her will in his cheeks as a younger Leia buried her tears inside herself. They must never see you crack. The mask betrays nothing.

Leia Organa had soft hands. He remembers that, although he doesn’t wish to. _Does the greatest of the knights of Ren still simper over a woman’s touch? Do you still feel called to softness? To the light?_

Never, supreme leader. 

Yet he can still feel her as bodily as though she was only outside in the corridor. In his dreams he remembers things she used to say, or things he imagines she had said. 

“You’re strong the Force, Ben. Stronger than I am. Maybe as strong as your grandfather. That doesn’t mean you can be weak in everything else.” With her hand on his scrawny shoulder. 

He was a small, skinny, weak child, gangly in the way of boys who grow too quickly, without time enough to grow used to their stature. He grew taller than his father and hard discipline had made his body thick and strong; he dwarfs her in his mind, but had never done so in person. Perhaps has forgotten. He has not seen her in a long time. 

“You’re strong in the Force, Ben.” Her voice fine as a mist. He can see her face, her hair wound in braids of mourning, her dark clothes, the fine lines that have etched themselves like runes around her eyes- lines that speak of war and loss. “Stronger than I am.” 

_The rebel general is stronger than she realizes,_ Snoke had warned him. _She must be eliminated. As long as she does not know the depths of her power, she is no danger. But she will know before long._

__“Maybe as strong as your grandfather.”_ _

__His fingers tense around the steering pistons, his thumb over the trigger. She had taught him how to fire a blaster, hadn’t she? It was one of those things. Had direct, efficient way of shooting- not like Han Solo, who was a flyboy and showed off. “Never waste a shot,” she told him, arranging his skinny fingers around the blaster’s muzzle to steady the aim. “Never do anything that doesn’t matter.”_ _

__He had never been a good shot, not like his parents. The lightsaber was always his weapon, the raw power of it made him feel skilled and strong. Could remember his own futile attempts at constructing his own saber, haggling for fake kybers when they forced him along on diplomatic trips to Hosnian Prime. And, when he failed, he meticulously constructed his own mask. Black with shiny trim, entirely without instruction or help beyond what was in his own mind. And presented it to his mother as one might present a bundle of snowblooms._ _

__She had looked at it for a moment, the planes of her face gone hard and shiny. Then she picked it up, tested the weight of it in her hand, heel of her hand beneath the chin piece._ _

__“You built this, Ben?”_ _

__“Yeah. I did.”_ _

__“Did Luke help you? Or your father?”_ _

__“No.” He was offended by the suggestion. “I did it all on my own- I wanted to be like Anakin Skywalker, and then I can be a real Jedi-”_ _

__“Ben.”_ _

__Knew the tone of her voice and hated it._ _

__“I know it’s hard for you to understand. You’re nine years old, and you think you know everything there is to know in the galaxy.”_ _

__“I know how to build a lightsab-”_ _

__“But that doesn’t make you a Jedi. And a mask doesn’t either. It definitely doesn’t. You know what Luke’s told you.”_ _

__His chest shrivelled under his shirt._ _

__“A mask isn’t what made Anakin a Jedi. It was part of his darkness. The Force is about balance. About discipline. And you, my son, have neither of those things yet.”_ _

__“Yes I do. I do! Anakin-”_ _

__He saw her fingers tighten around the mask- his mask- and her knuckles turned pale. “You know enough about Anakin Skywalker not to finish that sentence.”_ _

__“I know he was a great man! And he was younger than me when he started training-”_ _

__“A great man?”_ _

__“Dad said he was.”_ _

__Her mouth went to her lips and her eyelids flickered. Showed weakness for a moment before she straightened her spine and put the mask back onto the table. It rocked slightly, a rattle like old bones._ _

__“Anakin Skywalker was weak, Ben. He was weak because he couldn’t control himself, and it killed him. It nearly killed everyone in the galaxy. He might have been a great man, but he wasn’t. Power doesn’t make you great. It’s the ability to know when to stop- how to use the power we are given without abusing it- that makes someone great.”_ _

__She extended her hands to him, welcoming him into her embrace. Sometimes he can remember her strong mother scent. The crush of her arms. He climbed into her lap with his head tucked beneath her chin, let her hold him tight enough to feel the beating of his heart, hands enfolded over his back and skinny shoulders._ _

__“I just want to be great. Like you and Dad and Uncle Luke.”_ _

__“And you will be.” She held him tighter still. “But you have so much anger in you still, Ben. You think the universe owes you something simply because you’re in it. You cannot be great until you let go of everything that keeps you its prisoner.”_ _

__He sat up and looked anxiously into her face. Waiting for a validation of himself. Leia put her hand on his white cheek. Then his shoulder._ _

__“You’re strong the Force, Ben. Stronger than I am. Maybe as strong as your grandfather. That doesn’t mean you can be weak in everything else.”_ _

__Maybe in the end he was going to tell them to fall back after all. Or maybe its her silent voice in the ether who makes him take his hand from the trigger. So it isn’t him that kills her, that kills them all- he know this as he watches gleaming rubble and the shattered remnants of rebel commandos drift suddenly into the blackness of space. And so Leia Organa- General Organa- is dead._ _

__So why can he still feel her presence near him? The sharp knaw of her insistence that he come home. Hadn’t that been what Han Solo asked of him? To come home?_ _

___There is no home for me now._ _ _

___You’re strong in the Force, Ben. Stronger than I am. Maybe as strong as Anakin Skywalker._ _ _

___That had frightened her. His power frightened her. He sees his eyes in her face when he sleeps, hears her calling to him._ _ _

____There is no home for me now._ _ _ _

Then why can he still feel Leia Organa calling him home, as though he were her son? And why is the girl so near?


End file.
